The Teaching Company,

doing business as A trade name, trading name, or business name, is a pseudonym used by companies that do not operate under their registered company name. The term for this type of alternative name is a "fictitious" business name. Registering the fictitious name w ...

Wondrium, is a media production company that produces educational, video and audio content in the form of courses, documentaries, series under two content brands - Wondrium and The Great Courses. The company distributes their content globally through a mix of Direct to Consumer models such as their streaming service Wondrium.com and TheGreatCourses.com,as well distribution through third party platforms like Audible, Amazon and Roku. Wondrium, founded by Tom Rollins in 1990, is currently owned by Brentwood Associates PE and is headquartered in Chantilly,

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the East Coast of the United States, Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography an ...

History

In 1990, the company was founded by Thomas M. Rollins, former Chief Counsel of the

United States Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources The United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) generally considers matters relating to these issues. Its jurisdiction also extends beyond these issues to include several more specific areas, as defined by Sena ...

. Rollins had been inspired by a 10-hour videotaped lecture series by Irving Younger he watched while at

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

, and he began recruiting professors and experts to record lectures. Rollins invested all his money in the company, at one point using up all his credit cards, selling almost all his suits from his Washington days, and living in an attic. Because his company was for-profit, Rollins adapted course offerings to please customers; he threw out one course because the professor constantly insulted the viewers during lectures, and he asked some other professors to re-record segments that had unsupported political commentary. By 2000, the company was well established, with about $20 million (USD) in annual revenue. In October 2006, the company was acquired by

Brentwood Associates Brentwood Associates is a private equity firm in the US with groups focusing on leveraged buyout. The firm, which is based in Los Angeles, was founded in 1972. Their most recent fund was a $1.15bn fund raised in 2017. The venture capital gro ...

, a private equity investment firm. In 2011 the firm had 200 employees. In 2016, the company began offering a

streaming service Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...

, charging $20 (USD) per month, with on-line access to about 280 courses from its catalogue. In April 2021, the company announced the rebranding of its global streaming platform from the Great Courses Plus to Wondrium, along with new licensing agreements to include content from

Kino Lorber Kino Lorber is an international film distribution company based in New York City. Founded in 1977, it was originally known as Kino International until it was acquired by and merged into Lorber HT Digital in 2009. It specializes in art house films, ...

, MagellanTV, and Craftsy.

Courses and instructors

As of December 2019, the company lists the following categories and numbers of courses: * Better Living (187) * Economics & Finance (27) * Fine Arts (31) * High School (39) * History (229) * Literature & Language (109) * Mathematics (48) * Music (36) * Philosophy & Intellectual History (120) * Professional (75) * Religion (83) * Science (191) The following academics, among others, have authored courses. This list covers only instructors about whom an article exists. * Gregory S. Aldrete * Patrick Allitt * Stephen Alvarez * Dorsey Armstrong * Kenneth R. Bartlett * Arthur T. Benjamin *

Jonah Berger Jonah or Jonas, ''Yōnā'', "dove"; gr, Ἰωνᾶς ''Iōnâs''; ar, يونس ' or '; Latin: ''Ionas'' son of Amittai, is a prophet in the Hebrew Bible and the Quran, from Gath-hepher of the northern kingdom of Israel in about the 8th cen ...

* Ira Block * Bob Brier * Edward B. Burger * Sean M. Carroll * Phillip Cary * Thomas Childers * David Christian * Eric H. Cline *

Jodi Cobb Jodi Cobb is an American photographer, living in Washington, D.C. She was named White House Photographer of the Year in 1985, and has received awards from Pictures of the Year International, World Press Photo and the National Press Photographer ...

* William R. Cook *

Anne Curzan Anne Curzan is a professor of English at the University of Michigan since 2012 and dean of its College of Literature, Science, and the Arts since 2019. Biography Curzan received a bachelor of arts in linguistics ''summa cum laude'' from Yale Uni ...

* Philip Daileader *

Dennis Dalton Dennis Gilmore Dalton is a professor of political science from the United States. From 1969 until 2008, Dalton was the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. Dalton's work had a particular focus on t ...

Leo Damrosch Leopold Damrosch Jr. (born 1941) is an American author and professor. In 2001, he was named the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard University. He received a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. from Cambridge University, where he was ...

Daniel Drezner Daniel W. Drezner (born August 23, 1968) is an American political scientist. He is professor of international politics at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is known for his scholarship and commentary on International ...

* William Dunham *

Malcolm David Eckel Malcolm David Eckel is Professor of Religion and Director of the Institute for Philosophy and Religion at Boston University, US. Early life and education Eckel received a B.A. from Harvard University, a B.A. and M.A. from Oxford University. Wh ...

Sylvia Earle Sylvia Alice Earle (née Reade; born August 30, 1935) is an American marine biologist, oceanographer, explorer, author, and lecturer. She has been a National Geographic explorer-in-residence since 1998. Earle was the first female chief scient ...

Bart D. Ehrman Bart Denton Ehrman (born 1955) is an American New Testament scholar focusing on textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He has written and edited 30 books, includin ...

John Esposito John Louis Esposito (born May 19, 1940) is an Italian-American academic, professor of Middle Eastern and religious studies, and scholar of Islamic studies, who serves as Professor of Religion, International Affairs, and Islamic Studies at Geo ...

* Brian M. Fagan * J. Rufus Fears *

Alexei Filippenko Alexei Vladimir "Alex" Filippenko (; born July 25, 1958) is an American astrophysicist and professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. Filippenko graduated from Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, California. He received a Ba ...

* Jane Friedman *

Sylvester James Gates Sylvester James Gates Jr. (born December 15, 1950), known as S. James Gates Jr. or Jim Gates, is an American theoretical physicist who works on supersymmetry, supergravity, and superstring theory. He currently holds the Clark Leadership Chair in ...

* Eamonn Gearon * Steven L. Goldman *

Anthony A. Goodman Anthony A. Goodman (born January 11, 1940) is an American breast cancer surgeon and author. He is Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Montana State University WWAMI Medical Sciences Program and is Affiliate Professor in the Department of Biological ...

Robert Greenberg Robert M. Greenberg (born April 18, 1954) is an American composer, pianist, and musicologist who was born in Brooklyn, New York. He has composed more than 50 works for a variety of instruments and voices, and has recorded a number of lecture ser ...

* Annie Griffiths * Patrick Grim * Allen C. Guelzo * Richard J. Haier * James Hall * Ken Hammond *

Kenneth W. Harl Kenneth W. Harl is an American scholar, author, and classicist. He received his B.A. in Classics and History at Trinity College, and his M.A. and PhD at Yale University. He was a Professor of History at Tulane University in New Orleans unti ...

Donald J. Harreld Donald James Harreld is a former professor of history with a dual appointment in European studies at Brigham Young University (BYU). Harreld specialized in the early modern history of the Netherlands. He was also the executive director of the Si ...

Robert Hazen Robert Miller Hazen (born November 1, 1948) is an American mineralogist and astrobiologist. He is a research scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Geophysical Laboratory and Clarence Robinson Professor of Earth Science at George ...

* Craig Heller * Kathleen Higgins *

James Hynes James Hynes (born August 23, 1955) is an American novelist. Biography Hynes was born in Okemos, Michigan,''Contemporary Authors Online'', Thomson Gale, 2004. and grew up in Big Rapids, Michigan. He currently resides in Austin, Texas, wher ...

Peter H. Irons Peter H. Irons (born August 11, 1940) is an American political activist, civil rights attorney, legal scholar, and professor emeritus of political science. He has written many books on the U.S. Supreme Court and constitutional litigation. Educ ...

Luke Timothy Johnson Luke Timothy Johnson (born November 20, 1943) is an American New Testament scholar and historian of early Christianity. He is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Candler School of Theology and a Senior Fello ...

* Ed Kashi *

Douglas Kellner Douglas Kellner (born May 31, 1943) is an American academic who works at the intersection of "third-generation" critical theory in the tradition of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, or Frankfurt School, and in cultural studies in the ...

Eileen Kennedy-Moore Eileen Kennedy-Moore is a Princeton, New Jersey-based clinical psychologist and the author or co-author of books for parents, children, and mental health professionals. She serves on the advisory board for ''Parents'' magazine and blogs about chi ...

Alan Charles Kors Alan Charles Kors (born July 18, 1943) is Henry Charles Lea Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught the intellectual history of the 17th and 18th centuries. He has received both the Lindback Foundation Awar ...

Joseph Koterski Joseph Koterski, S.J. (November 28, 1953 – August 9, 2021) was an American Jesuit priest, philosopher, author, and professor at Fordham University in the Bronx, New York. Biography In 1976, Koterski graduated with a H.A.B. degree in Classics ...

* Richard Kurin * Edward Larson *

Mark Leary Mark Richard Leary, Ph.D. (born November 29, 1954) is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University ( Durham, North Carolina). His research has made significant contributions to the fields of social psychology and personality psycho ...

Seth Lerer Seth Lerer (born 1955) is an American scholar who specializes in historical analyses of the English language, in addition to critical analyses of the works of several authors, particularly Geoffrey Chaucer. He is a Distinguished Professor of Liter ...

Amy-Jill Levine {{Infobox academic , name = Amy-Jill Levine , image = , alt = , caption = , birth_name = , birth_date = {{birth year and age, 1956 , birth_place = , death_date = , death_place = , nationality = American , other_names = A. J. ...

* Allan Lichtman * Don Lincoln *

Jodi Magness Jodi Magness (born September 19, 1956) is an archaeologist, orientalist and scholar of religion. She serves as the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She prev ...

Clancy Martin Clancy Martin (born May 7, 1967) is a Canadian philosopher, novelist, and essayist. His interests focuses on 19th century philosophy, existentialism, moral psychology, philosophy and literature, ethics & behavioral health, applied and professiona ...

John McWhorter John Hamilton McWhorter V (; born October 6, 1965) is an American linguist with a specialty in creole languages, sociolects, and Black English. He is currently associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University, where he also teaches Amer ...

* John Medina * Michael Melford *

Andrew B. Newberg Andrew Newberg is an American neuroscientist who is a professor in the Department of Integrative Medicine and Nutritional Sciences and the director of research at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University Hospi ...

Ashton Nichols Brooks Ashton Nichols (born 1953) is the Walter E. Beach ’56 Distinguished Chair Emeritus in Sustainable Studies and Professor of English Language and Literature Emeritus at Dickinson College. His interests are in literature, contemporary ecoc ...

Steven Novella Steven Paul Novella (born July 29, 1964) is an American clinical neurologist and associate professor at Yale University School of Medicine. Novella is best known for his involvement in the skeptical movement as a host of '' The Skeptics' Guid ...

* Sherwin B. Nuland *

Joseph Nye Joseph Samuel Nye Jr. (born January 19, 1937) is an American political scientist. He and Robert Keohane co-founded the international relations theory of neoliberalism, which they developed in their 1977 book ''Power and Interdependence''. Togethe ...

Robert A. Oden Robert Allen Oden Jr. (; born September 11, 1946) was the president of Kenyon College from 1995 to 2002, and president of Carleton College from 2002 to 2010. He was also a significant professor in the early years of The Teaching Company, contributi ...

* Pamela Radcliff * Mark Ravina * Richard Restak * Daniel N. Robinson * Rick Roderick * Jeffrey Rosen *

David B. Ruderman David B. Ruderman is the Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History at the University of Pennsylvania. From 1994 to 2014 he was the Ella Darivoff Director of Penn's Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, where he also held ...

* Robert Sapolsky *

Joel Sartore Joel Sartore is an American photographer focusing on conservation photography, speaker, author, teacher, and a long-time contributor to ''National Geographic'' magazine. He is the head of The National Geographic ''Photo Ark'' project, a 25-yea ...

Benjamin Schumacher Benjamin "Ben" Schumacher is an American theoretical physicist, working mostly in the field of quantum information theory. He discovered a way of interpreting quantum states as information. He came up with a way of compressing the information in ...

John Searle John Rogers Searle (; born July 31, 1932) is an American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. He began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959, and was Willis S. and Mari ...

Jeremy Shearmur Jeremy Shearmur (born 13 June 1948) is a British former reader in philosophy in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University, who retired at the end of 2013. He is currently an emeritus fellow, lives in Dumfries, Scotland, a ...

Michael Shermer Michael Brant Shermer (born September 8, 1954) is an American science writer, historian of science, executive director of The Skeptics Society, and founding publisher of '' Skeptic'' magazine, a publication focused on investigating pseudoscientif ...

Tom Shippey Thomas Alan Shippey (born 9 September 1943) is a British medievalist, a retired scholar of Middle and Old English literature as well as of modern fantasy and science fiction. He is considered one of the world's leading academic experts on the ...

Seth Shostak Seth Shostak (born July 20, 1943) is an American astronomer and author, and is currently the senior astronomer for the SETI Institute. Shostak hosts SETI's weekly radio show/podcast '' Big Picture Science'', has played himself numerous times in T ...

* Ronald K. Siegel *

Jeremy Silman Jeremy Silman (born August 28, 1954) is an American International Master (IM) of chess and writer. Silman was born in Del Rio, Texas. He began playing chess at the age of 12. He has won the American Open, the National Open, and the U.S. Open, and ...

* Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan *

Robert C. Solomon Robert C. Solomon (September 14, 1942 – January 2, 2007) was a philosopher and business ethicist, notable author, and "Distinguished Teaching Professor of Business and Philosophy" at the University of Texas at Austin, where he held a name ...

Richard B. Spence Richard Brian Spence (b. ''ca.'' 1951)"Spence, Richard B. 1951-."
''

* Michael Starbird * Jonathan Steinberg *

David R. Stone David Russell Stone (born 1968) is an American military historian and the William Eldridge Odom Professor of Russian Studies in the Strategy and Policy Department at the U.S. Naval War College. Stone received a Bachelor of Arts degree in histor ...

Steven Strogatz Steven Henry Strogatz (), born August 13, 1959, is an American mathematician and the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University. He is known for his work on nonlinear systems, including contributions to the study ...

* Michael Sugrue * James Tanton * Timothy Taylor * David Thorburn *

Neil deGrasse Tyson Neil deGrasse Tyson ( or ; born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. Tyson studied at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University. From 1991 to 1994, he was a p ...

Elizabeth Vandiver Elizabeth Vandiver (born 1956) is an American classical scholar. She is the Clement Biddle Penrose Professor of Latin and Classics at Whitman College, having previously taught at the University of Maryland, College Park. She received the pres ...

Indre Viskontas Indre Viskontas is a Lithuanian-Canadian neuroscientist and operatic soprano. She holds a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience and a M.M. in opera. She is a Professor of Psychology at the University of San Francisco and serves on the faculty at the ...

* Irwin Weil *

Arnold Weinstein Arnold Weinstein (June 10, 1927 – September 4, 2005) was an American poet, playwright, and librettist, who referred to himself as a "theatre poet". Weinstein is best known for his collaborations with composer William Bolcom, including the ope ...

* Eric R. Williams * Gary K. Wolfe * Richard Wolfson *

Molly Worthen Molly Worthen (born 1981) is a journalist and historian of American religion. Raised in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, she graduated from Yale in 2003 and earned a Ph.D. in American religious history there in 2011. She is a contributing opinion writer for ...

Michael E. Wysession Michael E. Wysession (born December 6, 1961) is a professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and author of numerous science textbooks published by Pearson Education, Prentice Hall and the Savvas Learning C ...

* Michael Yamashita * David Zarefsky

Business model

Courses are offered on DVD, direct Internet download (video or audio), or streaming. In 2018, the firm's competitors included

MOOC A massive open online course (MOOC ) or an open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the Web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets, ma ...

s such as

Coursera Coursera Inc. () is a U.S.-based massive open online course provider founded in 2012 by Stanford University computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller. Coursera works with universities and other organizations to offer online cour ...

and

Khan Academy Khan Academy is an American non-profit educational organization created in 2008 by Sal Khan. Its goal is creating a set of online tools that help educate students. The organization produces short lessons in the form of videos. Its website also i ...

. In 2016, the firm was earning $150 million annually in revenue. The target market for the courses is primarily "lifelong learners". Customers tend to be older professionals and retirees who have had successful careers. As of 2018, the catalog included over 600 different courses, ranging in cost from US$35 to over US$500. The firm sometimes sends recruiters to sit in on the lectures of college professors identified as being good teachers, to assess whether they might be suitable for course development; the best prospects would do a lecture for the Teaching Company, and if enough customers liked what they saw, the company would develop the course. Professors submit detailed outlines for each course, and company personnel would work with them to make sure that each 30 minute lecture was coherent and logical. The production quality of the courses is "a cut above" free courses offered on YouTube, according to a report in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. Chief executive Paul Suijk described ''The Great Courses'' as the "

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a ...

of learning".

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...

has been a fan of the series.

Reactions

American conservative analysts described the social science courses offered by The Teaching Company as more suitable to general audiences than what is offered at traditional American

liberal arts college A liberal arts college or liberal arts institution of higher education is a college with an emphasis on undergraduate study in liberal arts and sciences. Such colleges aim to impart a broad general knowledge and develop general intellectual capac ...

s. Noting that the company's audience is not similar to current U.S. college admissions, the indicated result was that the catalog has had less emphasis on issues such as

sexism Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers prima ...

and

racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...

, more common to historical lenses used after the 1960s, to prioritise content that describes "everything the civilization has figured out so far and to discover new things". The conservative analysts further note that the survey format of instruction predominates, with few in-depth courses on Western-specific thinkers or philosophical schools, and more emphasis on covering the fundamentals of a subject, as if it were an introductory college course.

References

Bibliography

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External links

WondriumThe Great Courses
{{Authority control Alternative education Companies based in Fairfax County, Virginia High school course levels Education companies established in 1990 1990 establishments in Virginia Adult education in the United States Subscription video streaming services 2006 mergers and acquisitions